Raja Farooq, Rehman press UN to act for release of Yasin Malik

MUZAFFARABAD: AJK Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider and former interior minister Rehman Malik have written separate letters to the United Nations, calling for the release of Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik.

In the letter addressed to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the AJK prime minister requested the UN to take notice of illegal detention of Malik by Indian forces, saying he was critically ill.

Malik’s wife Mishal Malik in interviews has been saying that the Indian Army kept him in a narrow cubicle where he was denied access to medical treatment and drinking water. He did not have a drop of water to drink for the last six days, she said, adding that her husband had developed a stone in his kidney.

Rehman, in his letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, drew his attention to the aggression and barbarism by Indian forces against the innocent Kashmiri people and the arrest of Malik, Chairman of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (Yasin).

Rehman said Malik had been shifted to the notorious Humhuma Joint Interrogation Centre where he was being inflicted with inhuman torture and solitary confinement without access to basic medical care. “He is a chronic patient of kidney disease and has a metallic valve in his heart,” he pointed out.

He urged the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to intervene and to persuade the Indian government in allowing his family to visit Malik and to provide him the basic health facilities at the earliest lest his life was lost due to insensitivity and highhandedness of the Indian Army.